About data, services and user needs The Vito experience

1
About data, services and user needs The Vito
experience

• Geert Borstlap, Vito
• Frascati
• April 22th, 2004

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GOALS

• To learn from the Vito experience
• To point out strong and weak points
• To address possible concerns at an early stage

3
Introduction of Vito

• Flemish research institute
• Sustainable technological development
• For government, industry and SME
• Specialized services and highly qualified RD
• In energy, environment and advanced materials
• 465 people 7 centres of expertise

Vito
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Introduction of TAP

• TAP center of expertise
• Remote sensing and earth observation processes
• TAP operates the PAF for the Vegetation
  instruments
• Vegetation-1 and 2 instruments
• onboard SPOT4 and SPOT5, launched in 1998/2002
• operational since 1998
• 5 TB of data online
• 70 regular customers to the Vegetation catalog
• 3000 users of the S10 and D10 products
• S10 and D10 are free after 3 months

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The shift of activities within Tap

• Tap started with thematic research
• Evolution to exploitation (e.g. CTIV, the
  Vegetation PAF)
• Evolution to implementation of value-added
  products (e.g. GEOSUCCESS, GLOBSCAR, GLOBCARBON)
• Evolution to generation of end-user services,
  driven by user requirements (e.g. GMFS)

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Inventory in 2002

• Multiple data series
• Multiple derived products
• Multiple integrated services implemented
• Multiple ways for dissemination of products
• Multiple user communities

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Inventory in 2002

• Experience with multiple data series
• SPOT4 / VEGETATION-1 since 1998, online
• SPOT5 / VEGETATION-2 since 2002, online
• NOAA / AVHRR, on tape
• ATSR2, AATSR, MERIS

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Inventory in 2002

• Multiple Derived Products
• Vegetation Standard Products
• P, S1, S10 and D10 products
• Vegetation Derived Products
• NPP (Net Primary Productivity), NEP (Net
  Ecosystem productivity), DMP (Dry Matter
  Productivity), Desert Locust, Small water Bodies
• Others
• fApar, Burnt Area, LAI, VGCP

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Inventory in 2002

• Multiple integrated services implemented
• Projecting
• Clipping
• Format conversion
• Difference maps
• Time series
• Classification

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Inventory in 2002

• Multiple ways for dissemination of products
• Internet
• Website
• FTP-site
• Physical
• Tape
• CD-Rom
• Broadcast
• over Africa via telecommunication satellite of
  EUMETSAT

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Inventory in 2002

• Multiple user communities, varying from
• Daily users
• Timeframe wants products daily
• Data volume small
• One time users (Researchers)
• Timeframe want products now and then
• Data volume high

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Inventory conclusion in 2002

• Symptoms
• A wild growth of data, services and users
• Conclusion
• There is a need for harmonization
• We should strive for synergy
• Result
• building the common system

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Common System

• Goals of the common system
• Sharing resources
• Sharing the operational infrastructure
• Re-use of software components over various
  projects
• Re-use of services
• Pooling of human resources and experience
• Share Web portal resources
• Harmonization of ground segment
• Facilitate the development of service prototypes
• Ease access to data and information
• Preparing to accommodate various user requested
  services (e.g. GMFS)
• The Common System in Vito is on a lower scale
  the same kind of move as the Service Support
  Environment in the OXYGEN project is within
  Europe
• Based on its own experience Vito fully supports
  the ideas behind the SSE

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Role in Mass

• Vitos initial role in MASS
• Role as an external service provider
• Established a prototype, with help from Intecs
  and Spacebel
• Delivered 6 products derived from Vegetation data
• S10 NDVI
• NPP Net Primary Productivity
• NEP Net Ecosystem Productivity
• DMP Dry Matter Productivity
• Apparent Green Cover Percentage (Desert Locust)
• Small Water Bodies

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Experience within Mass

• Toolbox
• Easy to install
• Easy to maintain services
• Relatively easy to integrate in existing
  applications
• Good support
• Nice concept

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Strong points

• SSE offers solutions for problems that we already
  encountered in the Micro-world within Vito.
• There is a need for a super-catalog
• The user communities already signaled multiple
  times the need for a super-catalog
• Service providers maintain internal freedom
• Technological choice
• Choice for J2EE, XML, XLST, SOAP, WSDL, BEA WLS
  and Oracle.

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Weak points and concerns

• Feedback
• How can we control where our products will go to,
  what they are used for,
• Performance
• Output products can be quite large, up to 50MB
• Transport is organized over the internet to the
  next service provider
• Many researchers require time series of products
• Limited functionality in the super-catalog
• Functionality is a common denominator of typical
  catalog functionality and doesnt necessarily
  fits your requirements
• List of products -gt RFQ
• One order one product
• Products can be ordered now on a per product
  basis, while in real life users may need
  hundreds/thousands of products